Creative Assembly Takes Up The Warhammer!

The team that brought us the Total War series will turn its attention to Games Workshop’s Warhammer Fantasy Battles setting.

Warhammer Fantasy is an often overlooked aspect of the Warhammer franchise with many in the main stream audience having only ever heard of Warhammer 40k and its grim dark futuristic setting. Today Sega wants to change that, striking a deal with Games Workshop and entrusting The Creative Assembly team to create multiple games based on and set within the Warhammer Fantasy universe. The Warhammer Fantasy setting itself is much older then its 40k counterpart, inspiring many tropes we see today and even having its setting, stories, and green-skinned orcs copied for use in the game Warcraft: Orcs and Humans by Blizzard.

The Creative Assembly has an impressive pedigree behind it, especially in the grand strategy circles, and I must confess seeing Warhammer Fantasy play out like a Total War game is right up my alley. While the genres of these games has not been stated I can’t contain my excitement at the prospect of this series getting some more love in the gaming industry and bringing the sheer depth and story potential into interactive form. Warhammer Fantasy is a setting near and dear to me, and with EA’s two most recent games in the setting being scorned for butchering the lore and characters of this setting, I am hoping that Sega and The Creative Assembly can set things right.

40 thoughts on “Creative Assembly Takes Up The Warhammer!”

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Firstly, to the article writer – Warhammer Fantasy isn’t that much older than Warhammer 40k – in fact, it’s only a little over 3 years it’s senior. In the world of Table Top gaming of all kinds – that’s not much at all. Secondly – While I also sort of consider CA games a variant of Grand Strategy, that’s about all it is – most Grand Strategy circles don’t consider CA games to be actual Grand Strategy games (literally a 5 second google search will turn up a wide range of articles, and forums on this very subject). TO people like Derp and CroRaptor – A: Creative Assembly has multiple teams, all solely dedicated to different games in their company portfolio, alternating releases – B: It’ll likely be good, and with the prestige of CA it’ll sell, very well, even if it’s mediocre – though, lets be realistic – there isn’t a single “bad” CA game in the Total War series. Not a single one – even if there is a concensus for not much differentiation between Napolean and Empire, they were still considered good, (even despite Empires bugs early on) and sold incredibly well. They’re still played, and still modded.

Sounds interesting, wonder which teams they’d pick. I’m pretty sure Empire, Chaos, Orcs n’ Goblins and probably one of the Elves races (dark/high/wood) would be cool to see Tomb Kings and Lizardmen imo. Would be totally dope if they somehow got every race in the game but that’s not going to happen, way too many of ’em =P

Hey Joe, been a few months since I commented, not since back in… like August? Dang. Any who, I just wanted to say, as a fan of Warhammer I have VERY high expctation for any and all licensing on the Warhammer franchise, wheather 40k or Fantasy. My standards go with Dawn of War as it is the eptime of the RTS genre, and Space Hulk as a squad, tactical shooter.

While I know the differences with both setting is pretty extreme it comes to me that only Relic (The company who gave us Dawn of War, and Space Marines. BOTH ARE AWESOME) is a company capable enough to make something work with this license, CURRENTLY.

Having played Mark of Chaos, I can see how difficult fantasy could be without resorting to a Warcraft clone, since that game flopped pretty bad. And as Blood bowl has taught us, this licenses is better suited for an MMO or RTS than anything else.

As for the subject of the company in question, they are a very capable company, and I am pleased they have the license instead of someone like Blizzard, who could easily destroy this franchise.

To the point. As a fellow Warhammer fan, my concerns are it’s systems (IF its an RTS), should they return to a base building structure like in DoW? Or should they do a table top style, point based structure like classical warhammer? Or a hybrid of both, like in DoW2? And if it adds a sims/RPG like system like in Shogun, would that system even work for this genres without sacrificing gameplay? Lets face it, Shogun 2 and Rome both suffered from the occasional troop cluster fudge, and incompetant AI without you holding their hand 24-7, while the DoW system suffered from NONE of that, and in a way had a more satisfying, and still challenging battle system.

Also, as a side note, are you looking forward to Dark Millenium going single player? :3

If you respond, Thanks. If not, I DO NOT BLAME YOU! I ramble more than Ben Yahtzee on Crack!

Damn, I was hoping for Medieval III… This looks great though, don’t get me wrong. Warhammer might be weird as a total war type title; I mean, I have yet to see a fantasy RTS strive for any sort of realism. That could be a good thing too, though. I guess time will tell.

Hell, if they add an MMO aspect to it would be great (like what Mark of Chaos tried to do but more strategic). let us have our own armies and then participate in grand campaigns on vast servers.

However, seeing how Shogun 2 money model is working I am kinda fearful for what they’d do to a warhammer game. I’m reffering to the plethora of DLC’s (I think they are up to 24 now) that add a race to the game and then some graphical options. Seeing as Warhammer Fantasy has a bazillion units and 15 main armies, and it’s a game centered on painting and customizing miniatures, I’m worried that Sega will roll out a 60 dollar game that will require another 60-70 dollars to play in its fullest. If it’s just theme-based DLC I wouldn’t mind. But if we had to buy a DLC to be able to field Vampire Counts for example, then that would be very bad indeed.

It is impressive though unwieldy to get working properly, and had hard locked my PC multiple times, I thought I had mentioned it in the article because I kept mentioning it on mumble but I may have to edit in that point.

I think that is more a case of Total War doing naughty things to your PC than the mod. Every Total war game has wreaked havoc on my pc until they put out about 3 patches. I know when a new TW game comes out not to even bother trying to play it until the first expansion fixes all the bugs.

It’s definitely about time CA tries out the fantasy setting, It was starting to run out of interesting total war game settings anyway (I’d say 1 or 2 more settings and then they would have to take everything they’ve already done and put a 2 or 3 behind it, hence Shogun 2 and now Rome 2.)

At first, I thought they acquired the 40k title, where I was like Uh-oh, but I’m at ease now that its the original warhammer. In fact, I’m ecstatic. Warhammer as a total war title would be probably the best thing to happen to the series, especially after EA’s past attempts which, in my opinion, nearly killed the franchise. As awesome as it is however, this statement worries me somewhat: Quote: “We’ll be doing the Warhammer universe justice in a way that has never been attempted before,” : Unquote. As much as I lover their enthusiasm, as I’ve said, this worries me. What exactly are going to get? My hope is a new total war game, but it hasn’t been officially announced what type of game it will be. Odds are it will be a total war title and I’m just worrying too much. Although it would be interesting if both Game Workshop and Creative assembly actually teamed up to make a new 40k title. I believe if that happened, it would be awesome! But for now, I think Creative assembly and The original warhammer is a match made in heaven. Hope we get the new game before 2015.

Games Workshop, despite their name, doesn’t do diddly with companies that buy the rights to their games. They litterally couldn’t give 2 shits if the game was good or not. All they care about is getting a check for the IP. The rest is just free advertising in dozens of gameing magazines. If the game bombs they just shrug and say it was the developer’s fault. If it is awesome, they up the cost for the IP when it comes time for renewal.

We get lucky enough, and if THQ ever relinquishes the Warhammer 40k IP and Creative Assembly buys that to…we might get lucky enough to see a Warhammer 40k Total War game. If were lucky.

For now though, I will settle for Warhammer. I really hope if they do make a Total War game which is extremely likely, I hope they include the Skaven and Lizardmen as playable factions. That would be amazing!

A 40k total war game might not work as well. Total War hasn’t touched modern combat of any kind yet, and I think it’s because of the way Total War combat works. Modern combat is fast-paced, units are always spread out and realistically one machine gunner could take out tons of people on his own. I know in 40k they have stuff against that but they’d have to revamp the combat system nonetheless. And I don’t think anyone here wants Company of Space Marines, no matter how badass that might be